DESIGN
OUR STORY STARTS WITH
TWO CHALLENGES
Today, the Netherlands urban fabric faces two major challenges within its built environment.First, there is a large number of underperforming office buildings that will be rendered unusable by law in 2023 due to the country increasing its standard for energy labels. Secondly, the country currently faces a housing crisis and more specifically of affordable housing.
UNDER-PERFORMING
OFFICE SPACE
URGENT NEED FOR NEW AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING
VACANT OFFICE BUILDINGS
A TRANSFORMING RENOVATION
CONCEPT
MOR’s concept starts with the idea of retrofitting the existing and underperforming office buildings to transform them into multi-functional buildings and net-positive contributors to the built environment.

FROM CONSUMER TO CONTIBUTOR
5 NET-POSITIVE OBJECTIVES

ENERGY +
By producing more energy than the building needs, the surrounding buildings can use that energy, or it could be stored in batteries in case of power outages.

AIR +

MATERIAL +
By using methods of ‘design for disassembly’ and choosing environmentally-friendly materials with high recycle/up-cycle values, the building becomes a material bank with each material and its specificities recorded in an open-source material passport.

WATER +

BIOMASS +
INFINITELY
ADAPTABLE
1. MULTI-FUNCTIONAL
The multi-functional program planned for the renovation strategy ensures dynamic integration in the neighbourhood with public and commercial accessible to all, as well as shared and communal spaces for the buildings residents to share resources and develop more sustainable behaviour over time.

2. PLANNED FOR GROWTH
The flexibility inherent to the design strategy allows each floor to react to the users’ changing needs over time. For example, the winter garden space can be reduced in favor for higher density apartment units to accommodate more people as they decide to move to the building.

3. MODULAR
Inside each apartment is a combination of 4 elementary MOR-designed modules: a wall module, a kitchen-bathroom module, a bedroom-workstation module, as well as a facade module.

